


Stretch and Strain

by Trobadora



Series: Mercury [4]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, M/M, handholding porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 12:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor didn't leave. Instead, a cool hand settled on Jack's knee, a sure and natural weight, as if such gestures between them were simply understood. - Set post-<i>Last of the Time Lords</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stretch and Strain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Porn Battle XV](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/65746.html) and the prompts: "Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness, reunited, solace, clothes".

The wooden park bench faced west across the bay. Jack sat right in the middle, clear discouragement to any passer-by. It was a dry, grey Cardiff afternoon, the sun a diffuse pale-white fleck through the low cloud cover. The display of the smartphone Jack held in his hand was blank; it was merely a prop for a brief break at the waterfront. It might have been a sandwich, or coffee in a cardboard cup; on other days, it had been.

Jack no longer came every day. At first he had: after a year spent on a ship run by a mad Time Lord, hovering over a world in ruins, he'd needed to see this - he'd needed to remind himself the world was still turning in all its glorious, magnificent human banality. He'd come and sat, and watched the world exist. Now, he sometimes managed days without.

So far no one had asked - not even Ianto; not even Gwen. He wasn't sure what he'd tell them when, inevitably, they did.

After all, that year on the _Valiant_ had never happened. They didn't need to know that less than a month ago and a paradox away, this planet had been broken by a mad god who'd bent time itself to tear it apart, all for the sake of a jab at the Doctor. They didn't need to know how they'd died, another instrument in the Master's torture array. They'd never know, not if Jack had anything to say about it.

People went past; he smiled at their very existence. Jack put his phone away, nearly ready to leave.

Slow steps across the grass from behind him, and the rustle of cloth - Jack turned, and startled at the sight of a coat and a suit and a face he hadn't expected to see again, not any time soon. The Doctor stilled as well, and they looked at each other, arrested.

Then the Doctor's lip curled up a little; he shrugged and came to sit, his long brown coat bunching on the bench next to Jack's greatcoat. Not touching, but close - Jack's place in the middle of the bench had left him little other choice.

The moment for a word of greeting had long passed, lost in the quiet of their meeting. The Doctor said nothing, merely sat there beside him. Jack said nothing in return, equally as eloquent.

What words were there? Never mind that they'd parted on good terms, with banter and laughter - before that, spoken and unspoken, there had been too many painful truths. Jack had felt raw, exposed. Leaving had been easy.

He'd have expected the Doctor to run far and fast, and not be seen for at least another hundred years.

They didn't look at each other, not full-on. But Jack, eyelashes lowered, could not resist a glance out of the corner of an eye - and met the Doctor's own flutter-quick peek. He smiled, and in his chest, a heaviness he hadn't even known was there began to lighten.

Beside him the Doctor drew a deep, audible breath and let it out again, slow, slow. Perhaps the Doctor, too, needed to remind himself he was no longer on the _Valiant_ , not in a tent, not in a wheelchair, not in a cage.

Perhaps this silence between them was as close to peace as either of them could come.

A moment later, the Doctor straightened, sitting forward a little, and Jack prepared himself to see him go, wordless as he'd come. Whatever the Doctor had come for, he'd not said, and either he had it or he'd changed his mind. Jack wouldn't ask. That he'd come at all, for whatever reason, was gift and boon enough.

The Doctor didn't leave. Instead, a cool hand settled on Jack's knee, a sure and natural weight, as if such gestures between them were simply understood. The simple touch nearly took Jack's breath away.

He couldn't move. The Doctor's hand stayed on his knee, resting. All of Jack was devastatingly aware of its small weight, a connection sending gooseflesh along his leg and up his side through the fabric of his trousers. It could have been nerve to nerve and would not have been more raw.

Jack sneaked another brief glance, and caught the Doctor's impish smirk. He breathed out a fragment of a helpless laugh, and closed his eyes. Blindly, he lifted his arm, brushing fingers along the sinews at the back of the Doctor's hand. He could feel the muscles in the Doctor's arm tense at the contact. It was the most fleeting of touches, stroking from the fingernails all the way up the Doctor's wrist and then back again.

The Doctor let out a shuddering sigh, breathing out tension, and his muscles relaxed, settling down. Jack continued, letting himself be absorbed in the movement. A tingling tension crawled through him, as if he were drawing it into his body through that small whispering touch, and it pooled in his belly, in his crotch.

Eventually Jack's hand came to rest on top of the Doctor's. The Doctor turned his hand, and they were palm to palm, holding each other, quiet and hyperaware.

Jack didn't open his eyes again until the Doctor let go, drawing back his hand. He blinked to adjust to the soft grey light of day, and they looked at each other fully. There were rings around the Doctor's eyes, and his skin seemed thin, translucent. His pupils were dilated; it might have made for a dark picture of pained arousal were it not for the crinkles of a genuine smile around his lips and the corners of his eyes. Jack's own answering smile felt inevitable, the necessary equal-and-opposite reaction, the balancing of a scale.

Eventually, after an eternity that might have lasted no longer than a minute (but Jack was getting good with discrepancies in subjective time; he had little choice, after all), the Doctor rose from the bench. Jack shifted a little to accommodate his growing arousal.

The Doctor stood, looking down at Jack, searching his face for something. Then he held out a hand, silent plea or offer or demand, Jack didn't know.

Jack swallowed. Whatever it was the Doctor was offering or asking, he couldn't say no, not this time. Something in his gut clenched tight. He took the Doctor's hand and let himself be pulled up. Palm against palm, fingers twined with fingers - it went through him like an electrical charge, making every hair stand up on his arms, his legs, the back of his neck.

They walked, hand in hand and silent. Jack let the Doctor lead him along the water, back toward the Plass. He didn't know what he'd agreed to, taking the Doctor's hand; he only knew that he'd had to, that he couldn't have turned away.

Further along, the stretch of ground between the path and the water tapered off, and only a metal guardrail separated land and water. The Doctor stopped, and Jack stopped as well. They stood, close, turned toward each other, not touching beyond the clasp of their hands, and the charge that had been building under Jack's skin seemed spread out, filling the air between them.

The Doctor's eyes were large, his pupils blown wide, and he was breathing through slightly parted lips. They both were. But the Doctor's hand remained firm in his, a sure and steady hold, anchoring him. It had been a languid slide into arousal, and Jack's cock was just now starting to strain against the seams of his trousers. Jack sneaked a look at the Doctor's crotch. The Doctor's legs were slightly apart, his hips canted forward, and there, too, was a growing bulge in his trousers.

Still neither of them moved. It would have been easy, even here in public with people all around them - just a single step forward, body to body. The Doctor might have pressed himself against Jack, might have let his body surge against Jack's, might have reached out to pull their hips together. Jack thought he might have come just from that, the Doctor's body against his, even through the layers of both their clothes.

The Doctor generally was all for instant gratification, for himself at least - when he denied himself it was usually in self-punishment. He'd done that before, and Jack had done his best to cut through the Doctor's situational masochism, as far as the Doctor would allow.

But this was different. There was no self-loathing in it, not this time. Jack knew exactly what the Doctor was doing. He was so aware of the Doctor's body right before him that he thought something might burst, but he, too, didn't move, wasn't seeking relief. Perhaps, he thought a little hysterically, they would be standing here forever, suspended in this moment, neither of them able to bring themselves to end it.

Less than a single pace between them: the Doctor didn't take that step, and Jack didn't take that step, and the moment stretched itself almost beyond bearing.

"Jack." The Doctor breathed his name into the space between them.

They both tensed. Jack felt the Doctor's fingers clench around his, waiting for the sudden breach of the silence they'd shared to burst the impossible bubble around them. It didn't.

It didn't. They were still there, in this moment, together. Slowly, gradually, Jack relaxed as he watched the realisation bloom behind the Doctor's eyes, and the hand in his relaxed as well. But under the Doctor's suit, under his skin, the tension didn't dissipate with the knowledge.

Jack didn't know the skin beneath that suit. The thought was there, at the front of his mind, all of a sudden, and it wouldn't leave.

"Doctor," Jack said quietly, reaching out with the name.

The Doctor looked down, head bent, eyelids lowered. His jaw worked, and his leg twitched as if he'd just stopped himself from scuffing a toe. "I suppose ..." He trailed off. "I don't know where I'm going with this," he eventually admitted.

That was ... not what it had looked like to Jack. "You were going somewhere," he said, gently, firmly. He squeezed the Doctor's hand. "And you were dragging me along."

The doctor's head came up, and ancient brown eyes met Jack's, a true Time Lord gaze. "Dragging's a bit much," he complained. "You came along willingly enough." The corner of his mouth turned down, and his face turned sheepish. "I think I was going to ask you to come travel with me again."

Jack had refused already, only weeks ago, and the Doctor should have known better than to try to trick and seduce him into changing his mind. Jack should have been angry. But instead, he couldn't help the small burst of laughter that bubbled up from his chest and spilled itself from his lips. "You don't know?"

The heaviness was pushed out of the Doctor's eyes by that mischievous spark Jack had never been able to resist. "Didn't you realise? I hardly ever know what I'm doing. Especially when I think I do."

Jack huffed a laugh. "That makes two of us, then." He lifted the Doctor's hand and brushed his lips against it, pressing his laughter into it, mirth underpinned with still-burning arousal.

"I don't know why you trust me, after ..."

Jack could fill in the rest of the sentence easily enough: After I ran away from you, called you wrong, used you and relied on you and ignored you. After all of that ... "I don't know either," he said. Back to painful truths. Perhaps they should have kept up the silence. Perhaps silence was the greatest kindness they had to offer each other.

The Doctor squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. "I'm sorry." And he was; it was clear in the unhappy curl of his lip, in the slight bow of his head, the diffident hand against the sleeve of Jack's coat. But still he went on, "If I did ask, would you come?"

_I'll come for you any time you want._ Jack swallowed down the reflexive, obvious answer. "No," he said instead, plain and simple honesty. He'd let himself get carried away, in the slow-rising heat of the Doctor's wordless seduction, but he did know better.

"Good." The Doctor's answer was barely a sigh. Then, hurried, eyes avoiding Jack, a rush of words: "Come travel with me again."

Jack's heart clenched. "No," he said again, the word ripped from his throat. What he wanted to say was _yes_ and _always_ and _thank you_ , and his fingers clenched around the Doctor's hand. "I'm sorry. No."

The Doctor's shoulders sagged, relieved of a weight, and he leaned a little in Jack's direction. The heat between them had dissipated not at all. Jack's body thrummed. He lifted a hand, brushed a caress across the Doctor's cheekbone, his temple, the strands of his spiky hair. "You should go," he whispered into the air between them.

"I should. I will." The Doctor shuddered through an uncertain breath, indrawn air let out in a nervous shiver. But he met Jack's eyes, and he let Jack see the burning in them. "I'm going."

Yet he lingered, holding them bound in a simmering moment, searing it into their skin, into their minds. Offering it as a memory and a promise.

It wasn't comfort. Jack knew only too well that the Doctor had little to offer, and would rarely accept it in turn. It was something far more strained and far more steadfast, an affirmation of the ties of friendship and lust and love between them that had been stretched thin but had not broken, would not break.

Finally the Doctor did let go, did step back. "This is hard," he muttered, tilting his head just so, bouncing a little on his toes. His eyes flicked up, batting a brief, impish smile at Jack. "You're worth it, though."

And then, his breath still caught in his throat, Jack did, after all, watch the Doctor walk away, brisk lively steps without hesitation, his brown coat billowing behind him.


End file.
